The State Water Resources Control Board recently issued a draft five-year work plan on the Delta ecosystem's water needs. This so-called "work plan" has been fiercely criticized by the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) and the California Sportsfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) for being nothing more than foot-dragging.
It turns out the water board staff was proposing the same thing in 1982. In an internal memo dated April 14, 1982,. U.S. bureau of Reclamation officials were warned by an Interior Department lawyer that the state water board staff was recommending studies to determine how much water needed to be left in the Delta and San Francisco Bay to keep them healthy. The lawyer warned the results "could be devastating" for Reclamation, which is the single largest diverter of Northern California water south to the corporate factory farms of the western San Joaquin Valley.
Now, 26 years later, those state water board studies STILL HAVE NOT BEEN COMPLETED and the board is proposing another five years of study. It's what I call the phenomena of "endless studies, no results." Why is it that a quarter of a century after the attached memo was written, the water boards still don't have the foggiest notion of how much water we need to keep the Bay/Delta estuary healthy and how much can safely be diverted for other uses?
To read the 1982 memo CLICK HERE.